Changing Doctoral Degrees

Book excerpt: Doctoral degrees have been a part of higher education ever since the first was conferred in Paris in around 1150. It is remarkable that this degree has survived and thrived for over eight centuries without significant change. Keith Allan Noble provides a concise, international summary of the past and present of doctoral degrees and predicts possible future developments, based on a study involving 67 scholars from Australia, Canada, Britain and the USA. He examines the strengths and weaknesses of both traditional and non-traditional doctoral programmes, and concludes with pragmatic recommendations suggesting how doctoral programmes should change. "Changing Doctoral Degrees" should be of interet to academics supervising doctoral canditates and for scholars researching higher education.